A disconcerting pattern has emerged: a blockbuster study finds that a certain practice leads to improved outcomes. Large national organizations codify the practice into a quality measure, forcing widespread adoption. Later studies prove the practice to be unhelpful, perhaps even dangerous. Oops. Think about it – we’ve now seen quality measures that prompted the use [...]
Archive | March, 2009
The PSA Story: The Triumph of Science Over Common Sense
My father, who celebrated his 79th birthday yesterday, is many things: eccentric, nearly deaf (though he attributes this to my mom being a “low talker”), hilarious, crotchety, and a true mensch. But he’s neither incontinent nor impotent. It might have been otherwise. Like most men over 50, he began having yearly PSAs checked about 20 [...]
Today’s NEJM Hospitalist Study: What’s the News?
A paper in today’s New England Journal proves what we all know – the hospitalist field is the only thing growing faster than the national debt. Even though that’s not news, this elegant biopsy of the Medicare database offers some new insights about our field, the fastest growing specialty in medical history. Briefly, the study [...]
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